After toodling around the north shore, hiking up at the top of Waimea Canyon, and doing the helicopter tour, we were content to spend the rest of the week holed up at our VRBO (vacation rental by owner) in Poipu on the sunny, dry south shore of Kauai. Our cozy one-bedroom apartment opened right out to this spectacular view at sunrise of a gorgeous bay, just a few steps away from our lanai/breakfast table.
The view and the proximity to the water make it sound like a sweet secluded cottage, maybe…but no. More like:
A condo building full of well-off white people from North America. At least we were on the first floor, second from the end. Elsewhere on the island you could see — and hear — roosters everywhere. Not so much here, though we were visited every afternoon by these friendly critters.
The bay offered spectacular snorkeling. Tons of beautiful, colorful fish — Moorish idols, pufferfish, triggerfish, needlefish — and gigantic sea turtles the size of a coffee table.
All we really wanted to do was lie around and read books.
I finished:
The Secret Chief Revealed — Myron Stolaroff
Black Deutschland — Darryl Pinckney
Nietzsche for Beginners (ridiculous and incoherent)
The Marrying Kind — Ken O’Neill
The Spell — Alan Hollinghurst
The Child — Sarah Schulman
Swords in the Hands of Children — Jonathan Lerner
Of course you have to eat, so we checked out the local farmer’s market and stocked up on some fruits new and unusual to us: rambutan (the red spiky-looking balls), chico (the purple ones — they sort of look like kiwi and taste a bit like cinnamon), and dragon’s eyes or langan (inside the thin shell, a slimy pitted fruit that tastes like a cross between a grape and a pear). Plus fresh pineapple and those small, dense, tasty apple bananas.
Right next door to our apartment complex stood the Beach House Restaurant, where people gravitated from miles around to view the sunset.
It’s not unusual to get a brief sprinkle sometime during the day in Hawaii, but you don’t always get a rainbow, let alone a double rainbow.
another eye opens 
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